If you haven’t seen BeTheMiddleman.com yet then you should head on over there now just to have a look at the wonderful design, I showcased the site a few weeks back in Weekly Web Design #17. Well I am lucky enough to know one the very talented minds behind the project and I thought it would be a great idea to ask them to provide me with some more details about what exactly went into making their idea happen. This is what they told me…

BeTheMiddleman.com a brand new private property portal, is the brain child of the co-founders, Gary Hartley (Designer), Zoe Piper (SEO and Marketing), Douglas Radburn (Development) and Nick Boldison (Development). After years of frustration at having no real tangible alternative to the traditional Estate Agent, we put our heads together to plan an online alternative that would give Home Owners, Landlords and Tenants the alternative they are looking for.

BeTheMiddleman.com aims to cut out the Estate Agent (the middleman) to help Home Owners and Landlords save money when selling and letting out their properties. Potential tenants looking to rent a property or a room can browse the site and use their feature packed admin console to contact vendors, organise viewings and complete the process with minimum fuss. With this in mind, BeTheMiddleman.com forged the strapline – No Agents No Fees No Fuss.

Initial planning involved market research, competitor research, tone of voice testing, sitemap analysis and so on. Once that hard work was complete, and we proved that this kind of online property portal was needed, we progressed onto wireframing the sites structure and features, along with a rough timescale and implementation strategy.

Everybody has been involved in every stage of the process, combining all our years of experience working professionally online to forge the best possible website. BeTheMiddleman.com is based on a FREEMIUM revenue model, this means the majority of our users can use the portal for FREE.

BeTheMiddleman.com launched into a period of private beta testing where 30 pre selected testers were chosen to test the website on both a technical and userbility level. After that period many bugs were fixed and a whole new list of future enhancements were drawn up. The site has now launched into open beta were anyone can register and use the service for free.

We are holding back on any marketing at the outset so we can increase the security for our users, implement awesome new features and populate the site with homely properties.

We currently have over 100+ registered users and and a handful of properties. We are soon to market the portal through online and offline channels, setup strategic third-party partnerships and continue to build the BeTheMiddleman.com community.

I’d just like to say a massive thank you to Gary for firstly agreeing to do this and also for providing such detailed information. I hope you enjoyed it!